Legal-Studies Professor Picked as Fulbright Scholar
Published 04.19.2001
The U.S. State Department has awarded a prestigious Fulbright Scholarship to S. Layne Russell, an attorney and assistant professor of legal studies at Pennsylvania College of Technology, who will use the opportunity to explore a "new legal era" in Slovenia, a country that broke away from the former communist Republic of Yugoslavia in 1991.
Russell, who has been granted a sabbatical leave from Penn College for the Spring 2002 semester, will be based at the University of Ljubljana, Slovenia. At the host institution he will help initiate a peer-mediation project for students, lecture in constitutional and mass-communications law, and participate in conferences and seminars with legal experts in the Slovenian community.
Upon returning home, Russell expects to help develop a collaborative project between Penn College's School of Business and Computer Technologies and the University of Ljubljana for the study of mass-communication laws.
"As an attorney and legal studies professor, I see glimpses of a legal evolution like none other in the post-World War II world," Russell wrote in his sabbatical request. "In the next dozen years or so, Slovenia will be a laboratory for human-rights cases and issues via the structure of its new laws. I aspire appointment in Slovenia to learn, explore and investigate this new legal era."
The Fulbright Scholar Program, which is sponsored by the State Department's Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, is recognized as the premier government program in international educational exchange. Named for Sen. J. William Fulbright of Arkansas, the program was signed into law by President Truman in 1946.
Fulbright grants are made to U.S. citizens and nationals of other countries for a variety of educational activities primarily university lecturing, advanced research, graduate study and teaching in elementary and secondary schools. More than 85,000 scholarship recipients have traveled abroad to lecture or conduct research in a variety of academic and professional fields, and more than 144,000 foreign citizens have visited the United States under Fulbright auspices.
For more information on the Fulbright Scholar Program, visit on the Web. Penn College also can be accessed online.